


star child: are you listening?

by prouvairing



Series: earth may not be your home [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alien Grantaire, Alternate Universe - Space Opera, Gen, Multi, Nonbinary Character, Shapeshifting, Space Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-14
Updated: 2015-05-14
Packaged: 2018-03-30 13:12:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,695
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3938095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prouvairing/pseuds/prouvairing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Intergalactic Space Patrol is just doing a routine check. Dr Joly has nothing to hide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	star child: are you listening?

**Author's Note:**

> Somewhat prompted by Maria [floretesdecolors](http://floretesdecolors.tumblr.com), who wanted Joly, Bossuet and Grantaire in a small medical ship in space, getting in trouble. My endless thanks to her, and to Tony and Pasha, who read this over for me.  
> If you see any problematic bits or errors please let me know.

The ship stopped by the Intergalactic Patrol is small and sleek, if a little battered. A model released about two decades ago, out of commission, of which only a few models remain in use. It is marked with the Intergalactic Medical Services scan code along the side.

It is designed to hold a crew of two – a smaller unit to travel to remote settlements. The doctor in charge greets the Patrol Commander right in the control room. Not that there is any other space available, as the only other areas on the ship are for sleeping and cargo.

The IMS doctor is a small Terran, registered as male by his home planet’s gender system. He has golden-brown skin, dark hair neatly parted, and lively dark eyes which remind the Commander of the shiny pebbles which line the beaches back home. The doctor shows his white teeth a lot, which the Commander is told is a friendly gesture on Terra. The Commander finds it slightly unnerving.

The doctor chatters on and on in one of the Terran dialects which, fortunately, the Commander’s universal translator can pick up, save one or two idiomatic expression. He shows the Commander the ship’s papers, which identify him as Dr J. Joly and the other crew member as his nurse, J. Lesgles, who is also the ship’s registered navigator.

Nurse Lesgles emerges from the sleeping quarters just as the Commander is overlooking Dr Joly’s credentials – base medical license on Terra, then his training with the IMS on a primary space-borne station in the fifth quadrant. The Nurse is another Terran, registered as agender. They are much taller and darker than Dr Joly, with broader shoulders and a distinct lack of hair on their head. If possible, Nurse Lesgles shows their teeth even more often than Dr Joly. They cheerily tell the Commander to call them ‘Bossuet,’ for some unfathomable reason.

The Commander, of course, has no time to waste lingering on the variety of Terran phenotypes and customs. Much more interesting and troubling, is the creature perched on the navigator’s chair, a smaller secondary Terran life-form, with brightly coloured feathers and a shiny beak.

“What’s this?” the Commander enquiries.

“That’s just R,” Dr Joly says, bubbly and casual.

“It’s our AI,” Nurse Lesgles says.

The Commander scans the papers. “There is no registered AI for this ship.”

This constitutes a violation. Dr Joly pauses for a fraction of a second, and something changes on his face. Unfortunately the Commander isn’t versed in Terran facial responses.

“Oh no, it’s not the ship’s AI,” Dr Joly assures the Commander.

“This is our personal AI,” Nurse Lesgles finishes for him.

“Both of yours?”

“We’re married,” they both say in unison.

“Do you have papers?”

Dr Joly shakes his head. “Is that going to be a problem?”

It isn’t quite regular, but carrying papers for personal AIs isn’t a legal requirement. The Commander signals in the negative, then proceeds to ask to see the cargo area.

This is especially delicate, as IMS ships have very specific regulation on the amount of medicine and supplies they are allowed to carry.

The ship is too small to hold much, and they seem to be running low on antibiotics. The Commander makes note of this and Dr Joly assures him that they have a stop planned on the nearest IMS station.

The floor of the cargo thuds hollowly under military-issue boots. The Commander notes this and taps gently on one of the floor panels. Dr Joly, finally, is quite silent, and is not showing his teeth anymore.

The AI, back in the control room, starts cawing loudly.

“We had a jump scheduled around this time,” explains Dr Joly. “R is just warning us.”

The Commander assures them, of course, that they will not be going anywhere until the inspection is through. The communication implant that connects directly back to the Patrol ship, however, says otherwise: too much time has already been wasted on this minor IMS ship.

The Commander proceeds to issue Dr Joly a small fine, even though the ship’s supply levels aren’t quite low enough to warrant it. But Dr Joly started showing his teeth again as soon as they stepped into the control room, and the Commander finds this quite annoying.

Stepping off the IMS ship is, all in all, a relief.

*

As soon as the Patrol Commander steps off the ship, Grantaire shifts back to his human form. He doesn’t like the parrot too much, but it had been the first thing to come to mind when the Patrol had approached.

He didn’t really like pretending to be an AI, but he wasn’t a registered crew member, and the IMS ship wasn’t technically supposed to carry more than two. And you simply didn’t want to let Patrol find out you were committing a violation. 

“Well,” he says. “Don’t say I didn’t tell you so.”

“So you told us so,” Joly says, slumping on the navigator’s chair. Which, yeah, still has Grantaire on it.

Joly is quite warm in Grantaire’s lap. “What were we supposed to do? Going into warp would just have made us look guilty,” he says.

“And they’d have followed us, and then I bet that Patrol Commander wouldn’t have overlooked the bolthole so easily,” Bossuet chimes in. “Or, you know, the illegal weapons.”

“Yeah what’s up with that?” Joly asks, leaning back towards Bossuet. When he does that, sometimes, he reminds Grantaire of one of those Terran flowers that follow their Sun.

“Patrols wouldn’t notice an asteroid if it were coming right at them,” Grantaire says.

“Lucky for us,” Bossuet says, with a smile, then fakes a frown. It doesn’t look quite right on their face. “Now you two, off my chair.”

“Aye, aye,” Joly replies cheerily. He stands up, as Grantaire shifts forms again, becoming small, shiny and winged.

“Oh, that’s pretty,” Joly says, watching Grantaire do a couple of somersaults in the air, before shifting to human again. “What is that?”

“A _bissar_ , small asteroid-dweller,” Grantaire replies. He used to see a lot of them on the asteroid belt where he grew up. They used to be his favourite shape to take up until he met Joly and Bossuet. Then he started to like looking human more and more.

His human face is a bit crooked and misshapen, and he doesn’t seem to be willing to settle on one colour for his eyes, while he picked a skin tone somewhere between Joly and Bossuet, and curls like Cosette’s. Sometimes he has a beard like Bahorel’s, sometimes he is stockier like Courfeyrac and sometimes leaner, or curvier like Eponine. He’s still not quite in tune with what _attractive_ necessarily means, by human standards, but he can’t say that he cares very much. Not so long as he looks like his friends.

“Are you ever going to settle on a form?” Bossuet had asked him when they’d first picked him up with their ship. They’d been just passing by the Varkum belt, which was were his kind stayed. They had never been planet-bound, and Grantaire had never seen anything but black space and asteroids and cold, faraway stars. Space was suffocating him. Ships didn’t pass by often, so when they did Grantaire made sure to peek into their windows and try to get one of them to take him away.

Joly and Bossuet had been the first to actually grant his request. Shifting into Terran life-forms, he’d been able to hear sounds for the first time, and see colours that didn’t exist on the Varkum belt. It had all been so, so new.

When Bossuet had asked, he’d been looking at holograms of more wildlife, and swished the feline tail he’d just imitated.

“Why would I do that?” he’d answered. Though he hadn’t been going by _he_ at the time. He’d picked the word later, because he liked it, even though all the concepts attached were still a bit nebulous to him. And he wasn’t sure they really applied to him. Like _attractive._

“The Varkum, we tend to take stuff we like, and make it ours,” he’d explained. “Like your birds that take shiny things?”

He’d turned into the bird in question, all glossy blue-black wings and a white belly.

“Like magpies!” Bossuet had piped up.

He’d been a magpie around them for a while because it made them smile, but had started working on his human form soon enough. Most secondary life-forms didn’t mind if he copied them exactly, but he’d soon figured out that humans took exception to that. If he wanted to look human for any extended period of time, he needed to pick and choose until he looked different enough to look like _himself._

The one thing he couldn’t _take_ , but had to be given, was a name. Names had to be given by people you loved. On the asteroid belt, he’d simply been A’er, _number five,_ because he had been the fifth in his brood.

Joly had commented that it was kind of like _aire_ which was the letter R in his and Bossuet’s language. So he had been Aire, and then Big R and then Grantaire.

He doesn’t like to think about the times before, on the asteroids, where sound did not travel at all and he was just another number five.

He doesn’t like to think about it, so he settles down in the passenger chair, and Joly proceeds to sit in his lap again.

“That’s dangerous,” Bossuet says. “At least strap yourselves down.”

“You know, Enjolras is still waiting for these weapons, so we _really_ shouldn’t be wasting this time arguing,” Grantaire says, and reaches back for the straps. He makes himself a little leaner so they’ll fit around him and Joly.

“Oh, _Enjolras_ is, isn’t he,” Joly croons, making Grantaire swat at him.

“With my luck,” Bossuet says, ignoring their antics. “We’ll come across an asteroid storm and _then_ you’ll both be in trouble.”

“Darling,” Joly says. “Where’s your sense of adventure?”

Bossuet’s smile splits their face in two. “Let me show you, darling.”

The blackness of space parts for them. The stars bend, and they are not very cold at all.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to make that clear in-text, but just in case: while Grantaire uses he/him pronouns, he does not identify as male.  
> There's gonna be a part two, but it's gonna be two-chapters long and I currently have only one and I'm not sure whether I'd rather post it all at once.  
> It's hopefully gonna have more shenanigans, but also a little bit more background on why they're smuggling weapons. And also, probably, E/R. You're warned.


End file.
